


Ghosts of Suburbia

by WritingCactus



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Friendship, Ghosts, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Lesbian Character, M/M, Teenage Dorks, Trans Male Character, yes both of those things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-10 04:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19899919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingCactus/pseuds/WritingCactus
Summary: Jessica expects exactly jack-shit when she has to move to the far edge of the suburbs. Instead, she gets an abandoned church in the silent part of the woods, a hazy creature stalking her from out of the corn, and a secret she's hidden from herself. On the bright side, she's found exactly the group of idiots that won't let her deal with it alone.





	1. In the Woods Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Specific warnings will be at the start of every chapter, but just be warned that this fic will contain themes of death and mild horror (at least if I'm doing this right). For this chapter there isn't really anything that I'm aware of, but if you have a specific trigger you're worried about, leave a comment letting me know so that I can warn for it in case it comes up!!!!

Jessica’s exaggerating when she says that Cottonwood was the last place on Earth she wants to spend her summer, but only a little. The place is basically a wasteland of bizarre lawn ornaments, old white people, and houses that wouldn’t ever stop smelling like bad candles. Technically, it’s the suburbs, but not the movie suburbs where the houses are all the same, the lawns are all perfect, and there are house parties, those kind of suburbs would’ve sucked just slightly less. She’d moved in with her dad a day and a half ago and she can already tell that nothing ever happens. It’s not just moving unexpectedly in the summer when none of her friends are around to say goodbye, or that her junior year will be at a completely new school where people genuinely care about football, but that it’s fucking Cottonwood. To put it simply, Jessica is trapped in a purgatory between pissed and bored out of her mind. And that’s in the middle of a “party”, too.

Hypothetically, it’s her dad’s way of celebrating her being there, except she has not a single memory of any of these distant relatives and all the food contains gelatin, cool whip, or both. She tries a vegetable tray, thinking that there’s no way to mess that up, just to find everything coated in sugar. One of her supposed uncles is wearing a MAGA hat, and it’s taking every ounce of her self control not to physically combust every time she has the misfortune of looking at him. She’s only holding herself back because her dad is really, really trying and she knows it, so she’ll have to just talk to him about it once everyone’s cleared out. Not that that’s a huge comfort. It was at least 90 **°** out and humid, her phone was at 9%, and nobody’s showing any signs of slowing down.

She stares at the edge of the woods. Everyone’s clumped in the part of the backyard that’s under the shade of some very flimsy tents, the rest of the space made up of a plain of dried, cracking grass and a few kids climbers that she hadn’t even used when she was six, caked with dirt and falling apart in a corner. It looks post-apocalyptic, except for the group of aunts behind her talking about some gossip so boring that it fades into the background with everything else.

It would be easy, to just walk out into the trees, she thinks without meaning to and suddenly the idea won’t go away. They look cool, and quiet, and like she won’t be forced to eat bits of pretzel in watermelon jello once she’s in there. She can disappear into the woods for an hour or two. She can disappear. 

Jessica grabs her boots, the heavy ones that have been caked in mud so much that she doesn’t remember what color they were when she bought them, lacing them up as tight as they’ll go. She leaves the tents and the strangers and the questions behind, walking across the crunching grass and into the trees. As the crab-grass fades into leaves and little plants, she thinks that she was right: it’s much cooler in here. There isn’t a path, obviously, but as long as she just keeps walking straight, she’ll be fine. Stopping now doesn’t even seem like an option, not when there’s so much deeper to go, now that she’s taken the first steps. Moss clings to the sides of rocks and fungi grows from dead logs, sunlight falls from between the branches, tinted green and splattering over everything. She thinks that she can hear the burble of a stream from somewhere just a little farther, and Jessica wants to find it. Somehow, though there’s no difference between where her feet fall and the rest of the groud, it feels like she’s on a trail anyway, outlined between the trees.

So she loses track of time, and badly, but time isn’t real during the summer anyway. But that doesn’t keep the sunlight from getting thinner and the woods grayer. Maybe she should’ve turned back way sooner, but Jessica swears, everytime she pushes back a branch or climbs over a boulder that the creek must be behind it, over and over and over until, finally, it is. But the water isn’t alone. She rounds a corner in the not-path and finds her feet at the edge of mud and, past that, a church. 

Or something that used to be a church. The wood is faded, some of it splintered and falling apart, with gaps in the walls and plaster-dust coating the floor in the parts of the inside she can see. It’s a big, ancient-looking building, like it’s rotted here in the woods as long as there have been trees in this place, but really it probably isn’t more than 20 years old. 

Jessica takes a few steps closer to the creek but doesn’t cross it, walking back and forth along the edge to see more instead. It looks like parts of it are burned, just odd patches crumbling into ash, the roof caved in over one part, and through a busted-up gap in the wall she can see a few plastic chairs scattered on their sides over a rotted carpet. There’s a cross above the door closest to her, the golden paint on it chipped around the center but still shiny in the slanted evening light. 

The building goes on and there’s plenty left to explore, but Jessica stops at the edge, her feet just starting to sink into the mud. Look, she’s not a superstitious person, she considers herself down-to-earth and reasonable, but as much as she hates to say it, she’s got a feeling. Except it’s not really _her_ feeling, but one that this place owns, hanging over everything; it’s something like dread but quieter. Silent. Nothing moves but her own lungs and ribs, a standstill between her and the empty church as something, a presence or a feeling or terror, rose, looming like a wave coming from the inside out, about to crash, and for a half second there’s the feeling of _light_ , a pinprick of it in her spine where her back meets her neck-- 

Fuck that, Jessica thinks, grabbing a solid branch from next to her and turning to sprint back into the woods. Of course there isn’t any real danger, the logical part of her brain reminds her, but there’s also no one around to see her running away. Not that booking it fixes the problem. It really just makes her feel like prey, and she holds onto her stick tighter.

Now time’s really gone sideways, and it feels like forever or just a moment before she’s at the edge of the trees again. It’s really dark now, her legs ache, and it takes a long, long time for breathing not to hurt, but it felt like just a few steps to get her here. She knows that it took hours to get that far in. Jessica also knows that she’s lost. 

It’s definitely not her dad’s, cramped, badly-painted house in front of her, but something much bigger and much nicer, something that doesn’t remotely belong in her neighborhood. Shit, shit, shit. She’ll just have to find out where she is and call her dad to pick her up, she thinks, heading towards the street--

“Who’s there?” Comes a hesitant voice from in front of her, towards the house, and she freezes, watching a flashlight beam dance over the ground. The grass here is actually green and well kept, too, so definitely not anywhere close to her street. But she’s in Alabama, rich neighborhood or not, so there’s probably someone around here keeps a shotgun for the sole purpose of anyone on their property. Jessica crosses her fingers.

“Uh, hey, I think I’m lost?” She calls, still holding onto her stick because she’s not stupid. The flashlight beam approaches, revealing everything around it, and she immediately decides that she’s safe because she can totally take the guy holding the flashlight. He looks right around her age, scrawny and kinda pale, with big eyes looking at her cautiously out from under a hat. She lets the stick hang down by her side.

“Why--what were you doing in the woods? I thought you were a murderer,” Not-a-Threat explains, and she raises an eyebrow.

“You thought a murderer was coming out of the woods and you go _towards_ them?” He looks guilty, scratching at the back of his neck and failing to come up with a good explanation, so she plows on. “I just got lost and came out at the wrong spot and my dad’s probably totally worried about me, can you drive?” Her phone is completely dead, so the sooner she gets home the less grounded she’ll be. 

“Uhhh, not really, but I have a friend who can?” Jessica sighs, more exasperated now than actually shaken, and nods. She stands in the dark grass while Not-a-Threat calls his friend who can drive, looking up at the light leaking out from the windows of the big house and listening to the roar of the cicadas. 

As they go around to the street to wait, she feels stupid. Not just for getting lost in the woods but for genuinely getting scared enough to run out of them like that, like there’s anything to worry about. Sure, an abandoned church in the woods at night is something only an idiot in a horror movie would explore, but she could’ve just walked back and maybe then actually gotten back to her own house. 

“So uh, I’m Jay,” says the guy, shifting the flashlight to his other hand so he can offer the right one, and she takes it.

“Jessica.” They stand under the streetlight for a long time after that until an old, beat-up van pulls up, the edges faded purple, a guy waving out the window at them. He’s looks a little bit scruffy but mostly just tired, with the clearest sideburns she’s ever seen on a teenager in her life, but her first instinct is that he’s good. Still, she brings her stick with her into the back of the car, and borrows Jay’s phone so she can call her dad and let her know the situation. He’s kind of mad but mostly relieved, and guilt tangles in her stomach.

Jay’s friend is named Tim and he is in fact a good guy, clearly making an effort to chat with her as the streetlights come in and out of view beside them. He doesn’t seem surprised when Jessica explains that Jay was going to try and talk to a stranger shuffling out of the woods at night, just laughs and shakes his head. She explains that she’s just moved from Montgomery and gets an adequate amount of sympathy for her situation, and it turns out that they’re going to the same high school in the fall, though, thankfully, neither Jay nor Tim seems like they care about football even a little bit. They give her pointers for which teachers are incompetent and which classmates to avoid, and rehash some of last year’s drama to someone who hasn’t heard it all a billion times. 

It’s the usual stuff that comes with stupid horny teenagers getting stuck with each other for nine months, and by the time they’re pulling into her driveway, Jay’s finishing up a rambling story of two seniors who went at it in the teacher’s lounge and their literature teacher’s dramatic tale of her walking in on it, and feels more like a real person again. 

Through the window, she sees her dad stop pacing, running his hands through his hair, and she hurries to get out before the car’s fully stopped. 

“Jessie, you’re okay!” He’s hugging her, too tightly, but she doesn’t mind. Still, she untangles him after a moment, hyper-aware of Jay and Tim still in the car. 

“I’m sorry dad, I uh, I just wanted to go for a hike and I got lost…” It sounds pathetic as far as excuses go, even if it’s actually what happened, but her dad seems content to chew her out later.

“You’re back in one piece, that’s what matters. Just never, ever do that again. Now, who helped you get here?” He asks, and she immediately knows, dreads, what’s coming. “You boys, come on out here, I need to thank you.”

They awkwardly get out of the car and stand in front of her dad, Jay picking at a loose thread in his jacket and Tim standing up way too straight, like he’s expecting to be judged on his posture. Instead, her dad just ruffles their hair in the most dad-like and embarrassing way possible, beaming. 

“Thank you so much for bringing my daughter home safely. I worry a lot about these younger generations, but you’re two fine young gentlemen, thank you for proving me wrong. Would you like to come over for lunch tomorrow as a reward?” He offers, and they share a look, mumbling and eventually sort of agreeing out of obligation, but by that point she’s got a hand over her eyes in exasperation. She looks up, though, when she hears Tim scrambling around in the back of the car for something, coming back out with the stick she’d left there.

“Uh, you want this?” He drawls, and she laughs, taking it. Her dad insists that they come over one more time before letting them go and hugs he one more time before letting her stumble back into the house and up to the bedroom that had been hers when she visited as a kid but is still unfamiliar, and she’s suddenly exhausted.

Jessica forgets all about the little church in the woods, for now. 


	2. Honeythief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Minor unreality, mentions of death, tiny bit of eye horror just in case.

Jessica wakes up the next morning, but not as herself. Not the usual way of not recognizing your surroundings in a new place, either. It takes her not a moment but minutes to come back, staring at the baby-blue walls, the dusty set of shelves lined with old trophies, and a photo of a kindergarten class just barely sitting still, until it finally clicks that one of those girls is  _ her _ . A moment to process, then she shakes herself, rubs the sleep out of her eyes, and forgets. 

She gets the expected talking-to about responsibility and safety from her dad as they set up the tiny dining room table, trying to think of news ways to promise that it won’t happen again. Jay and Tim will be over soon so her dad can pay off his bizarre fatherly-debt, and all Jessica can do is cross her fingers that the whole thing doesn’t go up in flames. 

“So uh, you think those two boys were cute? Is that what cute teenage boys look like nowadays?” Her dad asks, loudly, raising an eyebrow at her from across the table as he sets down some napkins.

Great fucking start. 

“Dad.”

“What, I’m just asking! Trying to connect with my teenage daughter!” Her face of pure disgust isn’t even forced, she is genuinely just that exasperated.

“ _ Dad _ .” He raises his hands in a white flag and backs off, just in time to go get the door, and she braces herself. Literally the single last thing on the planet she wants is to talk about dating with her over-enthusiastic dad, and she just barely manages to suppress the twist of discomfort in her stomach. Is that something she should be thi--the door opens. 

It goes better than her incredibly low expectations: her dad gets mostly-sincere compliments on his cooking, she gets to interact with people who wouldn’t genuinely ask to speak to the manager of a Mcdonalds, and it’s not even that awkward. Key word is “that”, because both of them are at least sort of awkward in different ways, but she thinks they’ve all figured each other out by the time her dad’s pouring lemonade.

“Oh, uh, it looks like we’ve got to head out soon. We told Alex we’d meet him at one, right?” Tim checks with Jay after an hour or two, and Jessica suddenly feels disconnected once more. 

“Yeah, I think we’re going to be trying out another location.” Now she’s really lost, but Tim pulls a definite “again?” face before Jay turns to her. “Our friend’s working on a paranormal documentary but he hasn’t decided where he wants it to be yet.”

“He’s way too picky, but it’s more time for the rest of us to goof off, so,” Tim shrugs, gathering up his paper plate. “I think he’s trying to like, make it all artsy n’ stuff, but I don’t think it’s possible to make wandering through a bunch of old buildings trying not to get tetanus poetic. 

“Do you wanna come?” Jay asks, looking up. “There’s more room in the van and we’re not doing anything real yet. You don’t have to if you don’t want to and stuff, though.” She looks to her dad, who just gives her a thumbs up over the tiny island separating the kitchen, where he’s been pretending to do chores for the last half hour.

“Sure, that sounds pretty cool.” she shrugs, gathering up her own stuff and finding the afternoon suddenly a lot more appealing. They piled back into the purple van from before, the inside full of heavy air from the sun, and go to get the rest of this Alex guy’s crew. The whole town is tiny altogether, but feels a lot bigger because it’s scattered between farmland and forests. 

One small shopping center sticking out of the suburbs is the only semblance of what Jessica considers civilization, in between the sprawling suburban houses, the tiny buildings and homes that look ancient, 24/7 convenience stores, antique malls, and the singular high school. The first person to join them along the way is a guy named Brian with a warm smile handshake and an even warmer smile, who’s tall but not gangly. Then there’s Alex, who is definitely tall in the gangly way and looks a little like he’s just barely on the other side of his emo phase, hauling a bunch of what must be film stuff with him. Finally, Amy joins them, a short, chubby girl who immediately elbows Alex in the side and finally, Amy, a short, chubby girl who immediately elbows Alex in the side to make him move to make room for her and makes Jessica think the word “bubbly”, her laughter lightening the entire car. They had a heads up that she’d be there, and everyone’s friendly enough, so she settles in to chat with Jay as they drive towards the edges of the loose town. 

The building they stop at hardly even counts as one, on the edge of collapsing and barely big enough for all of them to walk around in. 

“I wouldn’t stick around here after I died even if it was super gruesome or unresolved,” Tim comments, sticking his hand through where one of the walls has rotted through.

“Are those the ghost rules? What if you die and just want to hang out?” Brian asks, shaking his hand from the other side, and Jessica muffles a laugh in her hand. 

“No there’s not--we’re not doing ghost rules, we’re going into this with an open mind and coming up with possible boundaries based on evidence,” Alex tries, but Jay just bumps him with his shoulder and he gives up. 

“Yup, there’s nothing interesting in here!” Amy calls, not really necessary when the building they’re in is tiny and even the rush of cars passing by is muted. “I haven’t find a single bone or spooky sigil. Think we could paint some on?” Alex sighs, maybe a little dramatically, and sits down on the floor. They all follow him; it’s too hot to do anything else.

“Even if we have to stage it, the location needs to be better than this. Way better than this, somewhere that you could actually believe is haunted and not just sad. This isn’t that. ” Jessica thinks that it sounds like they’ve been trying to find somewhere good for awhile, and then she thinks “hey wait”. 

“Have you tried the church in the woods already? I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, but.” The suggestion is half sympathy, half wanting to be a part of something. 

“You have a haunted church in your backyard?” Brian asks, looking like that’s the coolest thing anyone’s ever said.

“It’s a pretty long walk out there, and it’s not haunted, just big enough that you could probably use at least part of it.” Alex temples his fingers together like a movie villain, pausing for a moment before he replies.

“We can check it out and I’ll see, thanks.”

“That means he’s actually super excited about this,” Amy stage-whispers over his shoulder, and he gives a half-hearted scowl. 

It goes without saying that they’ll check it out, just… not today. It’s too hot to move from their tiny, crumbling patch of shade, and Tim fishes a few lukewarm, mysterious capris suns out of the front of the van which sort of helps. It feels like exactly the way summer is supposed to be, kind of sticky and boring and lazy but in a good way, with light pushing its way through the gaps in the boards and shifting slowly across the floor, and all they’re really doing is goofing off and breathing, but why do anything else? The most she moves for awhile is to text her dad that, no, she wasn’t in danger, and yes, everyone was being nice to her. By the time they stop melting enough to leave, there’s still no sign of anything remotely haunted--or interesting. 

On the way back she ends up sitting next to Amy, sure now that bubbly is a good word for her, but that she’ll probably be able to come up with more than that. 

“No, seriously, there’s literally no way ghosts aren’t real. There’s way too many anecdotes and things that haven’t been explained and  _ can’t _ be explained. Come on!” Amy urged, like Jessica had just insulted her whole family, and she crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. 

“Technology is just making it easier to fake and take advantage of existing superstition. You can get rich off of saying that your hotel is haunted or putting anything even remotely convincing on youtube, it makes a buzz,” she argued back, but without any heat. It was too warm for that. Amy did an exaggerated pout/glare combo, so over the top that Jessica couldn’t help but snort. 

“Just admit that you’re too scared to face the truth. Ghosts are real and Jessica’s a coward, everybody!” Amy called to where everyone else in the van was having their own conversations, receiving a whole bunch of non-committal replies and mumbles.

“You’ve done it, I’ve been publicly shamed into believing in ghosts. Congrats. Seriously, show me a ghost and I’ll believe it, okay?

“Deal!” They shook hands clumsily, and both had to wipe their palms off from sweat afterwards, but the deal was made. 

Jessica had Tim drop her off at the convenience store near her dad’s house so she could get some terrible coffee, letting them know what time they could come over the next day and crossing her fingers and reassuring herself that she’d be able to find her way back to the abandoned church. Wandering through the woods for hours would not only be embarrassing but also  _ very  _ boring. By the time she’d obtained said coffee (as bad as expected), the sun was just on the edge of setting, pouring gold over everything. She turned left and started walking, the gravel crunching beneath her feet and a breeze softening the summer evening. 

The nature of Alabama, as long as you’re a little ways out from a city, is that just about everything warps itself into being farmland. Looking out at it from a car ride is one thing, but out here it’s just slotted between the buildings and the forest in the distant, creeping into the edges of the town. Her path leads her directly between two fields full of wheat, standing about as high as her waist and shifting easily with the breeze in miniature waves. It’s quiet, the gentle rustle of it in the wind the only sound, until the footfalls at the ede of her consciousness. 

Jessica turns already knowing that she’ll see something, finding it at the border of the field and the road, its shape a stark black against the softness of sunlight and the golden wheat. It is entirely still. Her eyes won’t listen to her brain, everything blurred like she’s crying but there aren’t any feelings at all, and it takes a long time for the shape to become anything more. When it does, it is only in pieces. Black fur, matted tight with something even darker and dripping onto the grass. Jaws, one limp and hanging open with brilliant white canines that line a mouth that goes on for far too long, another bared, lips curled back into the beginning of snarl that she cannot hear. Two sets of eyes, nothing but white circles, only a dizzy emptiness behind them. Watching her. 

The thing steps forward on a tangled paw that fails to press down on anything beneath it, and she can’t move, her breath trapped, frantic, in her chest, and Jessica can’t bear to keep looking at it, watches her own vision fade, feels her eyes rolling back--

There is a roar, and she jerks awake just as a car passes, leaving nothing on the other side of the road once it’s passed. Nothing there but the gravel road, the wheat field, and the sunset. She catches her breath, eventually, and resists the urge to run. 

Once she’s back in her neighborhood, surrounded by houses and weird stone statues, Jessica makes a show of looking at her half-finished coffee like it could possibly have done something to her and dumps it. But only after she’s looked over her shoulder one more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason it is my absolute goal to make Jessica's dad the most Dad™ ever. Also, I'm having enough fun writing Teen Shenanigans and Spooks that I'm working less on worrying if everything's perfect :^). Next update should be a little quicker!

**Author's Note:**

> There's not nearly enough Jemy content out there so I'm taking matters into my own hands. Comments are super appreciated!!!! :^D :^D :^D


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